I would like to thank Karen Rubin for her supportive Op Ed piece in support of the Great Neck Arts Center and to thank the Great Neck News for all of your follow up articles regarding the recent funding cuts to GNAC.
The Great Neck Arts Center is here and has been a provider of classes, programs, film series, gallery exhibits, concerts, lectures and special events in the community since 1994. We plan to stay here. We have never been stronger; we have never done more; and yet we have never needed the help of the community more than we do today.
Since 1996, we have been functioning as a provider of cultural services to schools and community centers within the Great Neck villages as well as to many outside our geographical borders. Our outreach programs, known as “ArtReach”, currently provide art, ceramics, fencing, dramatics, music, dance, and chess classes to students throughout Nassau County and Queens who would otherwise not be receiving this training, due to cuts in their school funding or inadequate budgeting in their districts.
The Great Neck Arts Center is also an affiliate of the National Gallery of Art and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, where our professional staff receive training from the best and the brightest in arts education around the country, so that we may bring it to special workshops in arts integration that provide training and development to classroom teachers in 12 school districts in our region.
Through our ArtReach programs, over ten thousand students and teachers have benefited from our work in the last year alone. Visitors to our Center’s exhibits and films add up to many, many hundreds more.
Last year, we launched the first Gold Coast International Film Festival in the Town of North Hempstead, which saw 15,000 people embracing a new cultural addition to our North Shore community. And our programs specifically geared to senior citizens in our region are providing wonderful experiences for this community as well.
The members of the arts center board of directors are working to help raise the funds to ensure that we continue to grow.
Now is the time for residents of this community to step up, to be counted as supporters of the arts center. It is time for mayors and their trustees to realize that it is in the best interests of their constituents and their merchants to maintain a multi-arts center in their community.
We ask that people who care about the Great Neck Arts Center let their public officials know how much they care.
We also ask that they call us at 516-829-2570, write to us at GNAC, 113 Middle Neck Road, Great Neck, NY 11021 or visit our website at www.greatneckarts.org to make a donation today and help this very important institution that has the capacity to affect every village in the peninsula.
This is an opportunity for us all to decide what kind of legacy we want to leave for our children and grandchildren. Please do not let this opportunity pass.
Regina Gil
Founder & Executive Director
The Great Neck Arts Center
